Elly Blue (previously) writes, "Will toilet paper be a valuable commodity after society collapses? Who will help you with your reproductive rights in the coming patriarchal dystopia? Why are humans so obsessed with gender? Are bots human? These questions and many more are answered with bicycles (and feminism!) in the eleven stories found in Bikes Not Rockets, the fifth volume in the Bikes in Space series. More relevant than ever, stories in this genre inspire visions of a future beyond the narrow status quo."

Dutch project Recycled Park is a riverside area with 28 plastic planters made from debris skimmed from the river. Watch how they built it.

Le Morne Brabant on the southwest coast of Mauritius has a cool optical illusion offshore: water flowing between two reefs pulls sand out to sea, giving the appearance of an underwater waterfall.YouTuber RubenMRU says:

Tukoi is a Melbourne-based tattoo artist who specializes in fluorescent tattoos. (more…)

FOR THE KIDS IN YOUR LIFE, AND THEIR SUMMER READING: Get Ruben Bolling’s hit book series for kids, The EMU Club Adventures."The EMU Club inhabits exactly the world I always hoped to live in when I was 12, when the answer to questions like 'Where did I put my toy' led inevitably to alien conspiracies and secret underground tunnels. A book for the curious and adventurous!" -Cory Doctorow, author of "For the Win" and "Little Brother""The type of non-stop action and improbably hilarious fun that only a kid could dream up. ... The EMU Club's adventures perfectly capture the intersection of imagination and wonder - the crossroad that's so often found in cardboard boxes, pillow forts and backyards everywhere." -GeekDadGet Book the First, "Alien Invasion in My Backyard," here.Get Book the Second, "Ghostly Thief of Time," here.—RESIST!! The temptation to not join Tom the Dancing Bug's INNER HIVE!More Tom the Dancing Bug comics on Boing Boing! (more…)

Imperial War Museums and 14-18 Now commissioned Peter Jackson to use the latest technology to restore archival footage of World War I, and the results are remarkable. (more…)

In the NYT, Hayley Phelan recommends disengagement from the information rat race.

Here's something unusual. Product and experience designer Berk Ilhan's Smile Mirror becomes reflective when someone smiles into it.

In 1883 fisherman Howard Blackburn was caught in a blizzard off the coast of Newfoundland. Facing bitter cold in an 18-foot boat, he passed through a series of harrowing adventures in a desperate struggle to stay alive and find help. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll follow Blackburn's dramatic story, which made him famous around the world.We'll also admire a runaway chicken and puzzle over a growing circle of dust.Show notesPlease support us on Patreon!

It's the only mainlined injection of capitalism worth your time this week.

Streaming is the new blogging, some say, where total committment to doing something interesting or offbeat in public attracts vast (and monetizable) audiences. But the long tail is still a dream: most people who attempt it have no audience whatsoever. And yet many persist, that 0 slowly burning a soul hole. Patricia Hernandez:

In an age before Microsoft Word, even before Corel WordPerfect, WordStar ruled the DOS word processing world. Beloved to this day for its simplicity, power and wealth of keystroke commands, some writers never gave it up: G.R.R. Martin maintains a DOS machine just to run WordStar 4. Enter WordTsar, a clone cut to run on modern machinery, brings the classic into the 21st century.

While you're waiting for the even darker season three of Stranger Things, relax to Sunday Moon's Eleven, which involves the corruption of Elmo and other notable muppets. (more…)

DNA tests on remains thought to be of Russia's last royals prove their authenticity, reports Deutsche Welle. Killed by Bolsheviks after the October revolution, probably at Lenin's command, they were shot, knifed and clubbed to death, then mutilated and dumped in the Koptyaki forest. Remains were found in the 1970s and first identified through DNA analysis in the 1990s, but...

Beat Saber is a VR version of music rhythm games like Guitar Hero. This cool demo plays in Darth Maul mode while taking the "Harder Better Faster Stronger" challenge. (more…)

$22 is the lowest price I've seen for an Aeropress coffee maker. (Just click the the little coupon checkbox on the Amazon page.) It's a lot of fun to make coffee with the Aeropress -- you pour a little water in the piston and put it in the microwave for about 40 seconds. Then you put a microfilter in the cylinder (you get a "years supply" with the Aeropress) and a scoop of ground coffee. The you put the cylinder on top of a cup (the company recommends using a clear mug to make the process even more fun), pour the heated (not boiling -- it'll make the coffee bitter and sour, they say) water, stir for 10 seconds, and press the piston down. A few seconds later, you have a wonderful cup of silky smooth coffee.https://youtu.be/dLyQKHLCD_k

In an interview with CBS News' Jeff Glor on Sunday, President Donald Trump was asked which nations he considered to be foes of the United States.(more…)

Alabama college student Walter Carr, 20, got a job at a moving company in a nearby town. The night before his new job started, his 2003 Nissan Altima broke down.(more…)

Sarah Palin is doing a great job promoting Sacha Baron Cohen's Showtime series, Who is America?, by going on TV and complaining that she had been tricked and embarrassed by Cohen when he interviewed her under false pretenses. Gee, who wants that?Interestingly, the is one of the first times that Palin didn't speak in the kind of nonsensical word salad she is famous for. She is articulate and directly answers the pandering softball questions that the Good Morning America host gently tosses her.And here's former GOP Illinois congressman / radio host Joe Walsh making similar complaints about being tricked into supporting the proposal to give guns to preschoolers:https://youtu.be/Z9LjwRRO9fk

You've probably seen the video clip from Who Is America? in which comedian provocateur Sacha Baron Cohen easily convinces right wing politicians and lobbyists to express their support for giving guns to four-year-olds. Here's another clip with Cohen's character trying to explain a mathematically unsound proposal to Bernie Sanders, who patiently explains why the proposal move the 99% into the 1% won't work. (more…)

The Facebook data set on tens of millions of Americans that was gathered for Cambridge Analytica was accessed from within Russia, British MP Damian Collins today told CNN.(more…)

Fathom Information Design created an interactive website called Fakebook that presents a bunch of Facebook ads purchased by Russia-linked agents, showing the intended audiences for the ads. Is their any reason to doubt that the Russians are still buying Facebook ads designed to divide and anger Americans?

There have been a lot of iconic images offering the FEELING of a NYC subway ride.The goth woman and her raven, and the Ramones and their guitars are the first to come to mind. Taking photos of people riding the subway is likely on par with photographers crapping out another image of San Franciaco's Golden Gate Bridge. Once in a while tho, we get art.I have an MTA card in my wallet.

I bought PG Tips for a taste off with my favorite black tea Barry's Gold Blend. I decided to finish the box, rather than just throw it out, and ended up depressed.When I first started drinking Barry's folks told me it was "a builder's blend" and that I would "taste the bag." Folks insisted I try PG Tips. A woman I'd been seeing who claimed deep knowledge of tea was an aficionado of the triangular PF Tips bag. I ignored them as I didn't care, and liked Barry's. After enough pressure, I tried PG Tips and wrote a review. I didn't like it much. The box got put away.A few weeks ago I put my box of Barry's in my camper and headed north up the West Coast of the United States of America. When I got home I realized the box must have been left someplace along the way. I was about to re-order when I realized the PG Tips was just sitting there. I'd finish it before reordering and reclaim that tiny bit of cabinet space.PG Tips tastes like cardboard. Rather than the 3-5 cups of Barry's I'll drink in a day, I was having one or less. Unfinished mugs of tea were gently evaporating around my kitchen and office. I was getting less done than I wanted to and felt pretty tired all day. Then I realized what was up!Quickly I ordered a few boxes of Barry's Gold Blend. This morning I made my first cup in a few weeks. I was thrilled to look into my cup of Barry's to see the abyss staring right back!Americans can find Barry's Gold Blend readily available via Amazon.

San Francisco's new mayor, London Breed, blames homeless people for the piles of poop and ever present scent of urine that characterize the city. There is also awesome avocado toast.Via the Modesto Bee:

Portland-based musician Randall Taylor, aka Amulets, creates gorgeous experimental music performances from modded Walkmans and old multitrack cassette decks playing handcrafted tape loops, live guitar loops processed through circuit-bent pedals, field recordings and other sound sources. He calls his portable setup, featured in the video below, the Suitcase of Drone. Absolutely stunning work.From Austin's Dimension Gallery where Amulets created a sound installation that runs until August 14:

The long-awaited biopic Bohemian Rhapsody tells the story of Freddie Mercury and Queen's incredible story from their formation in 1970 to their outstanding Live Aid performance in 1985 just a few years before Mercury died due to complications from AIDS.Hitting theaters November 2, the film stars Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury with Ben Hardy, Gwilym Lee, Joseph Mazzello, Allen Leech, and Lucy Boynton. Bryan Singer directed much of the principal photography before he was fired, apparently for repeatedly not showing up to work, and replaced by Dexter Fletcher who completed the movie.

The Mandalay Bay hotel was used by Stephen Paddock as a vantage point to slaughter dozens and hurt hundreds more in October 2017's gun massacre on the Las Vegas strip. Now the hotel's owner, MGM Resorts International, is suing his victims—more than 1000 of them—to warn them off trying to hold it in any part responsible.

Because Venmo defaults to making all payments public, privacy researcher Hang Do Thi Duc was able to download and analyze 208,000,000 transactions, whose notes and other metadata revealed a wealth of personal, compromising information, including drug deals and breakups. (more…)

Pew! Liquid Ass prank spray will make a room smell like farts, really foul smelling ones. According to people who have bought and used it, it's strong and it will make you gag. But it also has another use, a more noble one:

When my daughter was little, I had a mirror leaning against the wall for her to look in. For a while, she thought she had a playmate and would interact with this "other" baby. She would laugh with it and sometimes even kiss it. It was adorable. So I had to chuckle when I saw this video. This little guy probably hasn't had a mirror at his height before. From what I can gather, he thinks this standalone department store mirror is a window and that if he could just get around it, he could play with his new friend.

A new page at Itch.io, the top platform for publishing and selling indie games, reveals the most popular game development engines and apps there. Unity is way out in the lead, accounting for almost half the projects published at Itch. Construct, an app requiring no coding skills, and GameMaker, a general-purpose creative suite with powerful scripting tools and optional modules, together account for about a quarter of the projects.Then come engines designed for specific genres: Twine, for interactive fiction, in fourth, and RPG Maker, for Japanese-style computer role playing games, in fifth. PICO-8, a "fantasy console" that imposes strict limitations on developers in imitation of a 1980s' 8-bit box, is in sixth. Bitsy and Puzzlescript, which produce simple tile-based games, are the seventh- and twelfth-most popular engines. Ren'Py, for making visual novels, is in ninth. Unreal Engine and the beloved free 2D engine Löve round out the top 10.Of the rest, only the fast-growing Godot engine has more than 500 projects.Note that software frameworks—HTML games—are excluded from the tally. Only Phaser, with 1,173 projects, would rank in the top 10, between Bitsy and Unreal Engine.

I spent the last few days fighting off a mouse infestation in our RV. So far I've trapped and tossed six of the furry little bastards out on their asses. As I began the search for where they were getting into our rig, yesterday, I got to wondering how much space they can actually squeeze through. According to this video, I'm doomed.

The forthcoming Atari VCS got a mixed reception from players, who are wary of a nostalgic cash-grab but hopeful for something more versatile and capable than Nintendo's one-shot classics consoles. A great sign: not only has it received spec bumps to 8GB of RAM and a decent GPU, but owners can install Linux. You probably won't want to, but it's proof of the system's general-purpose performance and open-ness.

I first spoke with Chris Skaife in 2013 after he was was awarded a position at The Tower of London following a long and distinguished career in the the British Army. A Yeoman Warder, Skaife holds the position of Ravenmaster. As the title implies, he’s responsible for the care of the Tower's unkindness of ravens.Our first conversation about his gig left me fascinated: Here was a man with a job that’s completely singular in the world. His days, are full or tourists and the occasional state visit, history and tradition. That he goes about his duties in a uniform that looks like it’s designed to kill its wearer on a hot summer day, is shorthand for the amount of dedication he has to his responsibilities. I came from talking with Skaife with so many unanswered questions about what his day entails, his passion for the birds under his care and what it’s like to navigate such a unique gig. Happily, I’ve had most of my questions answered by Skaife’s upcoming book, The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London. It’s not out until October, but it is available for pre-order at Amazon. Chris, good fella that he is, provided me with an early draft of the book to read, a few weeks ago. I’m looking forward to buying the real McCoy once it becomes available.The book’s structure and Skaife’s friendly, matter-of-fact narrative style made for a quick, enjoyable read. It smacks of a friend talking you through his day at work. In the book, Skaife takes the reader on a tour of his daily duties, from morning until dusk, explaining the ins and outs of everything that he and his team do to keep the Tower of London’s ravens healthy and entertained. He’s happy to talk about his successes in the position of Ravenmaster. He’s also frank about his failures. The most fascinating bits of the book, for me at least, came from Skaife’s explanation of the relationships he has with each of the corvids in his care. There’s love, annoyance and respect in how he talks about each of the Ravens he’s responsible for. The amount of knowledge of corvid body language, the meaning behind the sounds that his ravens make and their individual quirks makes for a damn good read. Given the utter shambles of a world that we’re living in right now, running into a read like this felt like a vacation from the vile news cycle that I normally wade through with my eyes. When it’s possible to get your hands on a copy, I heartily recommend that you do so. It’s not a long book, but I think you’ll find it to be a very satisfying one. Image via Historic Royal Palaces

After seeing a successful Kickstarter project, Angus from Makers Muse has been experimenting with sphericons, unusual shapes that meander when they roll. (more…)

In their latest video, the strapping food and fitness YouTubers at Buff Dudes chainsawed down some rancher's "hazard trees" and made a bench press with the lumber. It may very well be the brawniest thing you've seen in a while. https://www.instagram.com/p/BlGoufCFAVC/https://www.instagram.com/p/BlBLbcJlLfG/(Likecool)

A couple of years ago, online read-it-later darling Instapaper got sold to Pinterest. Then, in the lousiest possible way, nothing happened. No real updates, tweaks or refinements for Instapaper the service or the app. It was frozen in time! Currently, it's not even possible to use it in Europe as its not in compliance with the new GDPR rules put in place in May. Fortunately, aside from the GDPR thing, everything still runs as smoothly as it did a few years back--users save content cleaved from the internet to read in their browser, on a Kindle or with a tablet or smartphone app, just like they could before the acquisition. But, as Instapaper's chief competitor, Pocket, has continued to add new features, better e-reader support (its app for Kobo E-Ink devices is frigging great,) and slicker mobile apps to its arsenal, it's been hard to stick by Instapaper, which feels stale by. Hopefully, all of that's about to change.This morning, in a press release, the team that sold Instapaper to Pinterest announced that they have bought the service back:

Twitter user πend creates mesmerizing mechanisms called kaleidocycles, which twist and torque and spin in an endless loop. Some of them are quite imaginative: (more…)

I've had a Roku, Apple TV, and the Fire TV Stick. I no longer use the Roku or Apple TV because the Fire TV Stick, in my experience is less buggy and easier to use than the other streaming devices. Also, I'm an Amazon Prime member, so I can watch a bunch of shows and movies that are included in the membership. Right now its on sale for just $20.

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Cybersecurity Subcommittee, is no different from other members of Trump's base. They admire him for his ability to stare into people's eyes and tell them "big whoppers." There is no such thing as an inconvenient truth for a Trumpkin, because they prefer falsehoods over facts.From Slate:

Back in May, indy romance author Faleena Hopkins embarked on a second career as a trademark troll, threatening to sue peers who use the word "cocky" in the titles of their romance novels, forcing people to take down books they'd written. (more…)

This video was far more interesting than I thought it was going to be. It's not only the story of the restoration of a cool barn find, a circa 1890 candy-making machine, but it details how Greg Cohen of Lofty Pursuits in Tallahassee, Florida used it to make strawberry "drops" (hard candies). Cohen is a real candy-making nerd and he shares how he spent 70 to 80 hours restoring this antique machine for the Klondike Gold Rush National Historic Museum in Skagway, Alaska:

Andy Phillip found a tree burl out in the world, then decided to turn it on a lathe and make it into a sapphire dragon's egg. (more…)